IN THE PIE-CHART WORLD OF macroeconomics, it is once again fashionable to bash Asia's "absent" consumers. Americans, we are told, tap easy credit to live beyond their means. Europeans, meanwhile, would rather cling to four-day workweeks than become more competitive, whereas "the Asian consumer has long been missing in action," as Morgan Stanley's chief global strategist Stephen Roach argued late last year in an essay entitled: "How to Fix the World." That familiar breakdown suggests a simple blueprint for rebalancing a global economy that has spun severely out of whack: Americans need to save more, Europeans must strive to become more efficient and Asians should shop till they drop.
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